Migrating from hyperscaler to sovereign storage: the runbook

Why migration stalls

The technical buyer agrees: sovereignty matters, the architecture is sound, the procurement story is defensible. Then the migration scoping conversation starts and everyone goes quiet. Sovereign migration has the same problem as any large infrastructure migration: high notional value, high real-world complexity, no obvious first step.

The runbook below is what we've seen work across pilots. It assumes a hyperscaler-native S3-based stack as the starting point. Adapt as needed.

Phase 0 — Audit (2-4 weeks)

Inventory the data

• What buckets / containers exist?
• What classes of data live where? (PHI, PII, financial, IP, operational)
• What regulatory regimes apply to each class?
• What is the data-sensitivity life of each class?

Document the residency posture

• For each bucket, what region is it in?
• What is the contractual residency claim?
• What is the actual residency? (Cross-region replication? DR shadow copies?)
• What is the parent jurisdiction of the provider?

Score the gap

The gap between "what the regulator expects" and "what we actually have" is your migration target. For most organisations, the gap is wider than the procurement deck suggests. Pay particular attention to: cross-region DR replication, vendor support data flows, telemetry, and AI tooling that handles records.

Phase 1 — Policy (2 weeks)

Define the jurisdictional policy

For each data class, define:

• The allow-list of acceptable jurisdictions (or the block-list of unacceptable ones)
• The provincial / regional overlay (e.g., PHIPA = Ontario; BC E-HIA = BC; etc.)
• The strictness mode: "fail uploads that violate policy" vs "log and route to acceptable"

Choose the compliance preset

SkyeConnex ships compliance packs (PIPEDA, GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA-BAA, FedRAMP) that bundle the encryption, geo, retention, and audit choices into one action. Pick the closest fit and customise from there.

Establish the multi-tenancy model

If you have multiple business units or operating regimes, plan the company hierarchy now. Reseller → Company → Account. Different units can have different policies; effective-policy cascade handles inheritance.

Phase 2 — Pilot (4-6 weeks)

Pick one workload

Best pilot candidates:

• Backup target retargeting (Veeam, AWS Backup → SkyeBucket)
• A single high-sensitivity bucket whose residency exposure is uncomfortable
• A new AI-RAG workload where the sovereignty story is greenfield

Connect storage providers

Choose 7 storage providers that satisfy your policy. SkyeConnex ships 14 plugins out of the box; integrate sovereign or regional providers via the plugin SDK if needed (under 500 lines per plugin).

Configure SkyeBucket

The S3-compatible gateway at s3.skyeconnex.com accepts SigV4 and supports path-style addressing. Re-point one configuration file in Veeam, AWS Backup, rclone, or whatever tool targets S3. The downstream stack inherits multi-cloud sovereignty.

Validate

• Run an upload — confirm shards land in expected jurisdictions via the SkyeMap
• Run a read — confirm reconstruction succeeds with up to 2 shards intentionally unreachable
• Run a compliance-report generation — verify the dual-signed JSON offline using the public issuer key

Phase 3 — Expand (3-6 months)

Migrate by data class

Migrate the highest-sensitivity classes first. For each:

• Inventory the existing objects
• Cut new writes to SkyeBucket immediately
• Background-migrate existing objects via parallel reads from the old store and writes through SkyeBucket
• Validate the SkyeMap reflects the expected residency

Migrate by team

Move teams onto SkyeConnex client surfaces (web, mobile, virtual drive) as they reach migration-readiness. The OnlyOffice / EurOffice integration means productivity tooling doesn't change.

Roll out compliance packs

For multi-tenant organisations, push per-company compliance packs as each business unit is onboarded. The effective-policy cascade means tenant administrators can refine within bounds without breaking the parent policy.

Phase 4 — Decommission (1-3 months)

Verify no writes remain

• Disable writes to the old store
• Monitor for any straggler writes — usually from forgotten cron jobs or legacy integrations
• Resolve and re-route any remaining write paths

Final integrity audit

• Confirm every migrated object has a valid SkyeConnex per-file integrity certificate
• Generate the Sovereignty Audit report and verify signed JSON offline
• Archive the migration audit trail as evidence for regulators

Decommission the old store

• For PHI / PII / sensitive data: cryptographic erasure (rotate the wrap key, confirm previous-key access is impossible)
• For backup data: time-bounded delete schedule
• Retain the access logs and migration audit trail per your retention policy

Common pitfalls

• Forgetting telemetry. Vendor and AI telemetry often leaks content. Audit and re-route.
• Forgetting DR. Disaster-recovery shadow copies often cross borders without notification. Audit and disable cross-jurisdictional DR before migration.
• Underestimating retention obligations. Legal hold may prevent immediate decommission. Plan for parallel-running.
• Treating the migration as a single phase. Most successful migrations span 6-12 months across phases.

Want help scoping it?

Most migrations benefit from a 30-minute scoping call to identify the right pilot. Book a briefing; we'll bring an annotated version of this runbook tailored to your stack.

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Published February 9, 2026 · Written by SkyeConnex Inc. · More from the SkyeConnex blog